bass distortion

[machinevos]

bass distortion

Hi i’m trying to recreate a sound from the nexus examples.

I really like the “drive/distortion” that has been put on the bass in this example

Analog 002

Now i’ve tried every eq, drive, gain distortion out there and it just wont sound the same

Can anyone tell me by ear what kind of effect is on the bass.

Cause it sounds like distortion/overdrive/gain, but whithout it becoming “muddy”.

I already a lot with the eq, but it seems as though there is another effect.
I dying to find out what this effect is because it sounds really cool.

[Chael]

Have you tried doing some parallel distortion? If you use ableton drop your distortion unit of choice on the channel, group it then open up the chain menu, right click on the chain menu and select add chain. You should now have 2 chains 1 with a distortion plug in and one empty one. Open up the macros and map the volume of each chain to its own knob, this way you can mix both dry and wet signals so it doesn’t over distort the signal. Another thing you can do is add a filter after the distortion so you can tame the frequencies you want to mix then just eq to taste. Hope that helps, let me know if you have any issues

[Chael]

I have just had a listen back to this and I don’t think it is any kind of distortion, to me it sounds like the filter envelope is doing the work, it has a very squelchy sound to it, try low sustain and release times and a short decay that is modulated rhythmically on each note

[ReefaTheFunky1]

@Chael

Have you tried doing some parallel distortion? If you use ableton drop your distortion unit of choice on the channel, group it then open up the chain menu, right click on the chain menu and select add chain. You should now have 2 chains 1 with a distortion plug in and one empty one. Open up the macros and map the volume of each chain to its own knob, this way you can mix both dry and wet signals so it doesn’t over distort the signal. Another thing you can do is add a filter after the distortion so you can tame the frequencies you want to mix then just eq to taste. Hope that helps, let me know if you have any issues

Thanks for this, deff gonna use this on my sub basses. Been using 2 different audio channels and mixing them instead but this seems like an easier option thanks.

[Chael]

@ReefaTheFunky1

Thanks for this, deff gonna use this on my sub basses. Been using 2 different audio channels and mixing them instead but this seems like an easier option thanks.

I like to use the vinyl distortion plugin mono and the pinch mode. Its great for getting your kick and bass glued together, if you group your kick and bass channels and apply the technique on the group with some low multiband compression you can get them sitting together nicely, you may have to tweek the low/mid crossover (usually around the 120-150hz area) and bump up the output a little after dialing in the comp.
You can use this same technique with pretty much anything, it also works well with reverb. Parallel processing opens up a lot of doors and gives you much more control when applying fx, it really did change the way I make music